Learning to Read with Primary Arts of Language

I am thankful for our Little Man for many reasons, but one of them is that because of him, we still had one child young enough to use Primary Arts of Language, published by IEW just last spring! I have not yet met an IEW product that was not excellently written, and this is no exception. It is a fun, gentle, well laid out way to introduce reading, writing, spelling, and literature to young children (not necessarily all at the same time), and I have loved using it with Little Man!

First, a warning. This is a long post with lots of pictures. If you want the full explanation, continue reading. Click on pictures to enlarge them and see more detail. If you simply want the bottom line, scroll to the bottom!

The whole program consists of three Teacher Books (one for reading, one for writing, and one for the games that you make as you go), student workpages in the form of e-books to download and print, and a "phonetic farm" folder with stickers that the student puts on one at a time as they are learned.




Here is Little Man with his phonetic farm folder last spring! We started this program very slowly toward the end of his kindergarten year, and are still working through it a year later because that's just the pace that fits our lifestyle at the moment. :0)

Each day there is a "work page" as part of the lesson. This is the part the child is to do independently. At the beginning the work pages are super easy, such as filling in color names like this:



And then they get progressively harder. Here is one from Lesson 20:



PAL also utilizes the use of games to reinforce the concepts taught each day, which can be made very simply out of manila file folders. The game "boards" and game pieces are pre-printed and provided. I have heard that some moms make all the games ahead of time, but I have been making them as we come to them. I put the game pieces in a letter sized envelope, and tape this envelope to the back of the file folder. Everything is kept together this way, all ready to play the game the next time! This was a game we played that reinforced a specific spelling rule.



Here is a game that teaches prepositions. We use an emptied out box (muffins in our case!) to put the pieces under, or on, or in.

"..the ant is under the box..."

Sometimes we play the game with a chair instead of the box, and Little Man gets on the chair, or crawls under the chair, or runs around the chair, or jumps over the chair.. He loves it when we play the game this way!

As part of each lesson, new words are written on index cards and taught to the student. Before very many lessons have passed, you have enough cards to begin stringing together simple sentences. Our Little Man felt such success when he could begin to read "real" sentences!


So, here's the bottom line:

If you have used another program in the past with great success, and you are comfortable with it, stick with it. Why fix it if it ain't broken? For anyone used to a simpler program (such as myself, who used How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for my other children), PAL does have a lot of moving parts. However, the author, Jill Pike, has done an admirable job of making it as open-and-go as possible (or, as she would say, "fall out of bed easy"!) and it can't be beat in its comprehensive approach to all the arts of language. Also, this uses the sight-sound method of reading instruction, which means that it blends together the benefits of learning phonics with the benefits of learning sight words, so that the student is able to read real sentences very quickly. In my mind, this is a superior method to teaching phonics only (or, heaven forbid, sight words only!).

If you have only one child you are schooling and wish to do a complete lesson, with all its parts, in one day, go for it! But it is very flexible, and can be adapted to your needs and the amount of time you have each day. We now do the reading and writing lesson on one day (about 30 minutes), and the story/literature lesson another day (another 30 minutes). I love that the games, once learned, can be played with an older sibling, and the daily reading sheets can become future reading practice. On extra busy days, that's all the "reading" we do. Review is built in, and all the pieces of reading, writing, spelling, literature, and thinking skills are woven together beautifully.

If you are looking for that type of program, you will be very happy with Primary Arts of Language!

Easter Egg Decorating - 2012

Daughter G and Son L

I love these two!

They are so special. They are so different. They are so fun.

I took daughter G clothes shopping a couple weeks ago. She needed some new capris for this spring/summer, and had about $25 of clothing allowance money to spend. She shunned the thrift stores, so we went to J.C. Penny. Couldn't find anything there for less than $25, so we moved on to Kohl's. Found a few options, so we continued to the "trying on" stage. After multiple trips (for me) out to get different sizes, and much turning in front of mirrors (for her), two hours later we left the story with nothing. In that sense it was disappointing for her, but we had fun being together, and I enjoyed studying her a little more (on a subsequent trip she found some!).

I took son L jeans shopping three days ago. He had outgrown all his jeans and wanted a pair for our weekend away. We dashed down to the thrift store, grabbed five pair off the rack, and he went in the changing room. Loved the first two pair he tried on. Ten minutes and $17 later, I walked out with a happy 11 year old holding two new pair of jeans (size 16 by the way!).

I love these two! They are so special. They are so different. They are so fun.

Kite Flying Day!

What a glorious time we had flying kites with Hailey!


We ate a picnic lunch first, and the weather was p.e.r.f.e.c.t.


Then it was on to the big hill....






Son C flew a home-made one. If you look at the white house, and the tree covering the left side of the front of the house, you can just make out his tiny white triangle of a kite!


Here it is up close. He wasn't satisfied at first with how it was flying.


But daddy gave more specific instructions, and showed him how.... and he was much more successful after that!



A fun day that is already a lovely memory!

Hailey was here!!!

My niece Hailey was able to be with us for Easter, and what fun we had! (okay, technically she's my first cousin once removed, but it's much easier to say she's my niece). We had such a great time with her! She just creates fun wherever she goes.

More pics coming later, but this was taken on kite flying day!

Our children kept up the annual "hair salon" tradition we have established with Hailey and her older sister, Sarah.



We love you Hailey! We're so thankful you were able to come!

Easter Ornaments - The Easter Story in Context

Recently I was invited to speak to our MOPS group on the topic of Easter traditions. As I prayed about how to best prepare for this talk, the Lord plopped a terrific idea into my head, about how to tell the Easter story in the context of the entire Bible. As christian parents we do need to be faithful to teach our children about the spiritual significance of this holiday, but I think the death and resurrection of Jesus makes more sense when our children understand why Jesus had to die. So with the Lord's help, I worked out a way to tell a condensed version of the entire Bible in about seven minutes, using household objects.



Starting with a lego tree to represent creation,


I told about how satan (a fallen angel who wanted to be god instead of God being God) came to the first man and the first woman in the form of a serpent, and lied to them about the fruit that God had told them not to eat. A plastic snake represented the serpent, and a plastic cherry from the Hi-Ho Cheeri-O game represented the fruit.


There were a couple other objects in between, but then we came to when the promised Savior, Jesus, was born, and that is what we celebrate at Christmastime.


I used a couple other objects to tell about Jesus' time on earth, and then got to the part where he was betrayed by a friend and turned over to the religious authorities, to whom he was a tremendous threat. I used a cross and nail when telling about Jesus' crucifixion (the red on the cross is wax ~ this was from an activity we did at a Good Friday service a few years ago).


I used a strip of cloth to tell about how when ladies went to the tomb three days later to put spices on Jesus' body, it wasn't there! The cloth his body had been wrapped in was neatly folded in the tomb, but Jesus' body was gone!


A playmobil crown represented heaven, which Jesus is preparing for those who put their trust in Him for salvation from sin.


When I did this at our MOPS group, it took me right about seven minutes to tell the whole story. When we do it around our Easter dinner table tomorrow I suspect it may take a few minutes longer because we plan to go around the table, taking turns reading the parts and hanging objects on the tree.

My children were very enthusiastic about helping me find objects to represent different parts of the story, and were eager to hear the whole story in context, from creation to the resurrection.

Thank you, God, for this great idea!

For a complete script of the story, and a list of all objects used, go here.

If it snows later this month.....

it's my fault, because I put the shovels and snow boots away today!